I'd say, the reason for that requirement is to be able to have courses you followed at another university count for your graduation at your "own" university. As I said, students are encouraged to do some courses abroad. So they should know for how much their courses from abroad will count. But as I was raised in a credits/course based system, help me think outside the box: what's the alternative? Let a student follow courses whatever he fancies, and after four years, he's up to one big, final examination?
That's a widely-followed approach, yes. I believe that's how things worked at Oxbridge when I taught there, for instance. There wasn't even any guarantee that two tutors would cover the same material.
Not much - but you know that before you start the course, don't you?
But that doesn't help if/when one university slices the coursework differently than another -- differently enough that the material isn't comparable across universities.
No, but now you're introducing an additional variable, viz. that the coursework is different than what the student knows/thinks he knows. Let's put the situation more direct: student/autodidact reads the description of the course on the web, thinks "I know that stuff", and goes to the professor and asks him if he can do the test directly. What's against that - according to Bologna?
Absolutely nothing.
But there's nothing against that
not according to Bologna, either. In that regard, Bologna changes nothing. All universities with which I'm familiar have a process in place for challenging requirements.
The difference is that the Bologna process is supposed to homogenize what the courses and procedures are, so that whatever requirement is fulfilled at U. van Amsterdam will also be fulfilled at Cambridge or the Sorbonne. Which means, in turn, that there will be fewer different offerings, because whatever UvA offers must fit the Bologna framework.
I don't follow your last conclusion. You argued above, in fact, that a stupid combination like DiffEq/LinAlg (and I concur with that qualification) is bad for the autodidact. An autodidact is much more likely to have mastered on his own the coursework for a DiffEq class or for a LinAlg class than for a combined class.
This is simply wrong. An autodidact is much more likely to have mastered on his own whatever material he had in front of him, which may or may not correspond to any standardized course material. He'll read DiffEq until it gets too dull, too difficult, or too time-consuming, and then abandon it.
The effect is that he ends up with 1/2 of a Diff Eq class. By definition, an autodidact doesn't have a fanged instructor breathing down his neck telling him to master chapter 4 or else, so he's much more likely to ignore chapter 4 than a student who has to master it for a grade or credit.
The credit system makes it easier for him to pick a "base" university where the obligatory coursework matches as much as possible what he already (thinks he) knows, and then pick and choose from other universities the eligible courses to make up his degree. Or am I overlooking something?
Yes. You're overlooking the fact hat the whole point of Bologna is to homogenize the offerings across university to minimize the variance. It will be "easier to pick a 'base' university" only in the sense that there is much less real choice --rather like Ford's famous "any color as long as it's black" pronouncement.
Oxbridge, again, provides a good example. You can literally study
anything within the confines of the system as long as you can sit the finals at the end of three years. If you want to spend the entire second year of your math course studying cryptography and never touch calculus -- or for that matter, spend your entire second year studying calculus-free plant growth mechanics -- you're fine as long as your tutor doesn't object. (And if there's a question on the exams about plant growth, you're golden.)
And if you came in already knowing all about cryptography and plant growth, you needn't waste your tutor's time with that stuff (and would probably spend your year doing post-graduate level material if you were interested).
_BUT_ you can't transfer any of that study to another, course-based, university. So the Bologna protocols insist that Oxbridge must provide course-based teaching, including a list of what's covered and what's not, and cryptography-based plant growth mechanics is probably not on that list.
So the Bologna protocols limit the flexibility of the _university_ offererings, which in turn limits the flexibility of what they can accept from autodidacts, which in turn limits the autodidact's choices. You can get credit for any first-year math course you like as long as it's differential and integral calculus.
), but it's a path one could use. We are never going to just suddenly overturn centuries of practice, so there must be some gradual process, or perhaps a demo project.
.
), they had a scholar's program in which one student at a time could design his/her own program of study and follow that to any end. The fellow who graduated with me did a degree in something like 14th century French abstract architecture. When he received his diploma, he mentioned that he had been working part-time at the Post Office and that he would now do that full-time as a living; the degree had been only for his personal value. I always admired him as someone who knew what he was about.